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WILLIAM APPLEMAN WILLIAMS
Nor do I think that my writings on the Cold War argue (or imply)'
that Russia was simply "the (innocent) reactor" in a stimulus-response
model of foreign relations. There are several issues here: the first can
be discussed around that word "innocent." I do not think Russia "in–
nocent" in any relevant sense: it is not the glorious model for an
American revolution, and it neither withdrew to its prewar boundaries
nor constructed model socialist societies in the countries it came to
dominate. I do not know anyone of "all the other revisionist historians
of the Cold War" - if I understand the group Harrington means–
who would disagree with that sentence. Assuming that the obvious is
obvious, we aren't breast-beaters.
But I would insist, along with the revisionists, that passing judg–
ment on the nature of Soviet society or behavior is not the same thingh
as defining the central issues involved in writing the history of the Cold
War. Those judgments are important only where they can be shown to
have motivated various individuals and groups, and this I have dealt
with in other places. I would add, however, that
The Roots
does offer
help in understanding the role of those judgments (including their use
as a tool of manipulation) at different times in the twentieth century.
The primary questions about the Cold War concern who held deter–
mining power, how it was used (and why) and how that influenced
Russian action.
I do not see how anyone can any longer argue seriously that the
Soviet Union was at that point more powerful than the United States.
It was economically depleted, psychologically exhausted and confronted
by a nation whose economic system was unrivaled and which was not
only armed with nuclear weapons, but had used them. Russia did have
a precarious hold on Eastern Europe, but it faced serious opposition
there as it did in Asia. And American leaders, as well as the Soviets,
were aware of those relative and absolute weaknesses.
Hence we move on to the question of how America deployed its
power, and why it applied it in the way it did. Here, surprisingly, Har–
rington offers a variation of Schlesinger's thesis: he assumes we revision–
ists are Leninists, that we use the Leninist model of imperialism. Again,
I do not know any of us who rely on that crude tool. That, precisely,
is why I become very skeptical when Harrington asserts that economic
exploitation "of the ex-colonies has, with the large but not decisive ex–
ception of the empire of oil, been less and less important with each
year since World War II" (p. 503); when he reiterates Schlesinger's
point about nineteenth-century trade with Europe in terms of twentieth–
century investment (p. 504); and when he states flatly that America